Call it the Bob Rae effect. As the Liberals are bolstering their parliamentary front line, federal ministers are being let out of the cabinet cage by their keepers in the Prime Minister's Office.

Call it the Bob Rae effect. At the very time when the Liberals are bolstering their parliamentary front line, federal ministers are being let out of the cabinet cage by their keepers in the Prime Minister's Office.

After two years of PMO-enforced discretion, Stephen Harper's cabinet has recently been fanning out on the media circuit.

Once a rarity, sightings of journalists breaking bread with ministers have become more frequent. A number of media outlets report an increase in contacts with ministerial offices and some of the ministers involved confirm that they are acting with the tacit encouragement of the PMO.

Over the past few weeks, Environment Minister John Baird has taken his climate-change message on the media lunch circuit, including in Quebec. Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier is also reaching out to journalists in an effort to restore his faltering image as the rising Quebec star in the cabinet.

A number of other ministers have been more proactive in offering background chats about policies. The exercise is not without risk, as was shown last week when the PMO gave Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn the green light to talk to The Globe and Mail about Conservative prospects in Quebec.

The resulting headline – based on Blackburn's sense that a Harper majority government might reopen the Constitution to accommodate Quebec's long-standing demands – was clearly not what the PMO had in mind.

Notwithstanding the Canadian punditry industry, if the Prime Minister had wanted to fly a trial balloon to score points in Quebec, he would not have chosen a Toronto newspaper or the labour minister to do so.

From the NATO summit in Bucharest, the PMO went in full damage-control mode to kill Blackburn's message in the bud.

But the fact remains that the minister was not on a self-appointed mission. Like many of his colleagues, he has been prodded into coming out of his shell to engage the media.

In contrast, only two months ago, an informal dinner with the same minister sent alarm bells ringing in the PMO with Blackburn's beleaguered staffers being ordered to find out what their boss was up to before the night was out.

For a variety of reasons, that controlling approach is increasingly unsustainable.

Over the first two Conservative years in office, the PMO sucked the air out of the cabinet, reducing its members to public minions.

The notion of a Harper team became an oxymoron; many cabinet members came to share the media's sense that the PMO's abrasive approach to communications served neither the government's message nor its image well.

The Manley report's stinging indictment of the Tories' communications approach to the Afghan mission bolstered that contention.

At the same time this winter, Harper's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, his communications boss, Sandra Buckler, and her deputy, Dimitri Soudas, all found themselves at the centre of controversies that diverted attention from the government's message.

Finally, a prime ministerial solo act is a poor counter to the current Liberal strategy of showcasing the party's lineup of heavy-hitters.

The official Opposition and the government are bringing a more collegial approach to the dissemination of their respective messages out of different necessities.

The Liberals are aggressively promoting their team to mitigate the perceived weaknesses of an uncertain leader while the Conservatives are reluctantly putting more ministers in the window to blunt the edges of an authoritarian regime.

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